Italian tax police say they have uncovered a fraud that allowed 265 workers at the Pompeii archeological site to claim 700,000 euros in back pay for non-existent work.

Members of the site's security-guard force charged the governmental agency responsible running Pompeii for attending training courses that never existed.

Investigating prosecutors from the town of Torree Nunziata who are responsible for for the case have seized assets worth 700,000 euros -a corresponding value of the fraud - belonging to the person responsible for the fraud.

Pompeii was recently in the news when a series of collapses of 2,000 year old buildings sparked accusations of mismanagement by the Italian Culture Ministry.

A volcanic eruption in 79 AD buried Pompeii under 6 metres of volcanic ash, preserving much of the city. The archaeological site extends over 76 hectares.

Pompeii is the largest archaeological site in the world. It received 2.2 million visitors in the first 10 months of 2010.

Monday, 27 December 2010

An interesting idea about how Museums can and should be involved in excavations around the world was recently published in the New York Time Op-Eds by Bernie Frischer. Particularly important, I think, are his solutions for the thorny legal and economic concerns of host and sponsoring nations and even private collectors.

Thursday, 23 December 2010

Thanks to Francesco De Martino for posting to Blogging Pompeii's Facebook page a link to the following iPhone app:

Wall paintings in Pompeii

With this work we wanted to know the beauty of the murals of Pompeii no longer visible as before, but fortunately reproduced in a beautiful and rare book of large format after the discovery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The twenty plates, masterfully carved by Vincenzo Loria (1850 - 1939), reproduced with absolute fidelity to the original colors as they showed at the time of discovery. In its notice to readers, Giulio de Petra writes: "The execution entrusted to the establishment Richter & C. ° is the most accurate and most beautiful that could be desired. The colors are not the spoiled from the air, sun and rain, but they make a warm and bright, shining on the walls of Pompeii, just refurbished light ...". It is assumed that the splendid volume was produced in about 100 copies.

Monday, 20 December 2010

LOS ANGELES—After eighteen months of analysis, conservation, and re-stabilization, the bronze statue of Apollo Saettante (Apollo as an Archer) from Pompeii will go on view at the Getty Villa from March 2 to September 12, 2011 in the exhibition Apollo from Pompeii: Investigating an Ancient Bronze. Providing a behind-the-scenes look at this rare treasure, the special six-month exhibition presents the results of the first full study of this ancient sculpture.

Originally located in the Temple of Apollo in Pompeii, the Apollo Saettante was discovered in fragments centuries after it was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. The bulk of the figure was unearthed in June 1817 just north of the Forum. A year later, in October 1818, veteran soldiers hunting a fox near the ancient city walls stumbled across some of the statue’s still-missing parts. The Apollo was one of the first major bronzes to be found at Pompeii, and was subsequently reassembled and displayed in the Real Museo Borbonico in Naples.

The conservation of the Apollo Saettante at the Getty Villa is the result of an important collaboration between the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, as part of a broad cultural exchange agreement made in 2007 between the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Getty Museum. This exhibition marks the Apollo Saettante’s first showing in the United States, and complements the Villa’s collection of ancient works from Greece, Rome, and Etruria. Following its exhibition in Los Angeles, the statue will be returned to Naples, where the Getty's conservation efforts will ensure its stability for generations.

The Apollo Saettante arrived in Los Angeles on loan for study and conservation treatment in 2009, together with the Statue of an Ephebe (Youth) as a Lampbearer, which is currently on view in the Basilica at the Getty Villa.

“This project has provided us an unprecedented opportunity,” said Erik Risser, an assistant conservator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. “Large bronzes rarely survive from antiquity, and the chance to conduct a thorough investigation into the Apollo Saettante has brought to light its rich and complex history.”

A variety of approaches, including archival research, X-radiography, ultra-violet photography, and endoscopic examination, have provided important new information regarding both the techniques used to make the statue in antiquity, and also the methods used to restore it in the nineteenth century. The investigations extended to analyses of the metal alloy composition, the pigments on the surface, and even of the types of bolts used in the re-assembly, all to answer questions about previous restoration efforts.

Apollo from Pompeii: Investigating an Ancient Bronze presents the results of these investigations, displaying art-historical, technical, and scientific evidence side by side in order to demonstrate the range of methods used during the study of the statue at the Getty Villa. Special features include the discovery of a large void in the statue’s back, which indicates that the method of its ancient manufacture was highly unusual, and the identification of two different phases of restoration. An interactive touch-screen display in the exhibition will provide visitors with the opportunity to explore the statue. This interactive feature will also be available on the Web at www.getty.edu.

Alongside select examples of ancient bronze sculpture from the Getty Museum’s Antiquities collection and a series of archival drawings and documents from the Getty Research Institute, the exhibition will also feature a bronze statue of Artemis, the sister piece to the Apollo Saettante. The two faced one another in the Temple of Apollo at Pompeii, and the inclusion of the Artemis, also on loan from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, will provide a unique opportunity to develop and extend the discoveries that have been made in examining the Apollo.

This exhibition follows a series of Getty Villa exhibitions devoted to restoration and conservation, including The Hope Hygeia: Restoring a Statue’s History (2008), Fragment to Vase: Approaches to Ceramic Restoration (2008-2009), and Reconstructing Identity: A Statue of a God from Dresden (2009-2010), as well as early excavations in the Bay of Naples (The Herculaneum Women and the Origins of Archeology, 2007).

The exhibition is also one in a series of Italian collaborations that have brought important works of art to the Getty Museum, beginning in June 2009 with the display of the Chimaera of Arezzo in partnership with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence. The Getty also has long-term agreements with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, and the Sicilian Ministry of Culture and Sicilian Identity, for exhibitions over the coming years.

Apollo from Pompeii: Investigating an Ancient Bronze is presented in collaboration with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. It is curated by the Getty Museum’s Erik Risser, assistant conservator of antiquities, and David Saunders, assistant curator of antiquities. This exhibition runs concurrently with In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in Nineteenth-century Photography, March 2—September 12, 2011 at the Getty Villa.

The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that features the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu.

Visiting the Getty Villa

The Getty Villa is open Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed Tuesday and major holidays. Admission to the Getty Villa is always free. A ticket is required for admission. Tickets can be ordered in advance, or on the day of your visit, at www.getty.edu/visit or at (310) 440-7300. Parking is $15 per car, but free after 5pm for evening events. Groups of 15 or more must make reservations by phone. For more information, call 310-440-7300 (English or Spanish); 310-440-7305 (TTY line for the deaf or hearing impaired). The Getty Villa is at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, California.

Sign-up for e-Getty at www.getty.edu/subscribe to receive free monthly highlights of events at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa via e-mail, or visit www.getty.edu for a complete calendar of public programs.

Friday, 17 December 2010

It was announced yesterday by the Public Prosecutor's Office in Torre Annunziata (nearest one to Pompeii) that nine people are under investigation by the carabinieri for "disastro colposo" which can loosely be translated as "negligence" in English and is a fairly serious crime. This is specifically connected to the collapses of the Schola Armaturarum and the House of the Moralist.
The investigations are focusing on those involved in the management of the site before the Special Commissioner was appointed (i.e. before 2008), and include former Superintendent Guzzo, site director Antonio Varone and other Soprintendenza staff.
Technical consultants will be called in to identify the causes of the collapse as part of the investigation.
News coverage in Italy is surprisingly brief, for example this article, but I imagine that the issue will continue to attract public interest as developments occur.

Thursday, 16 December 2010

Even thought it's not yet listed on the CISPE website and is still in print according to L'Erma, I have seen a copy of the latest Cronache Ercolanesi - the 2010 edition - so papyrologists keep your eyes peeled! This volume also includes an index of the journal from 1971 to 2010.

Those, who like me, are more interested in the archaeology of Herculaneum will find the last article of interest: Maria Paola Guidobaldi and Pietro Giovanni Guzzo have written about the discovery of "Un rilievo neoattico da Ercolano" (A Neoattic relief from Herculaneum). This relief was found last year, displayed during the "Tre secoli di scoperte" exhibition and a copy of which is on display at the Herculaneum ticket office (and you can touch it as part of the multisensory trail).

The interest of the article lies not just in the fact that it describes the most recent significant discovery at Herculaneum - and relatively promptly too - but also for the description of the context. The relief was found in the newly named House of the Dionysiac Reliefs which is found in the corner of the ancient city of Herculaneum that lies in the excavation area of the Villa of the Papyri. The article includes new plans that not only show the precise relationship of this area (insula I and the north-west insula of the city) to the Villa of the Papyri, but also the precise layout of these areas.
Some of this information was included by Guidobaldi et al. in the first edition of the journal Vesuviana, but this article goes much further. In the first section, Guidobaldi offers a description and discussion of the Dionysiac scene depicted. Guzzo's section then places this new discovery in context - this includes a list (with bibliography) of similar reliefs used as decoration in houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Today is Blogging Pompeii's second birthday! And this is also my opportunity to thank all of you who have contributed to and/or supported this blog over the past two years!

To mark the occasion, it seems only right to post another selection of comments taken from Twitter (and this time I've included Italian and French tweets too). But note the common theme: conservation. The last couple of months have seen vast numbers of tweets about the collapses that have occurred at Pompeii from people who are shocked, angry and sad, and a few from people who think they are funny (!). Together they demonstrate the pull of Pompeii in contemporary imagination.

All spellings are original ...

So, is anyone else slightly obsessed with those walls collapsing at Pompeii?

Pompeii DOES needs saving. It needs to be rescued from conservatives, who despite their names, can't seem to conserve anything.

Is this a sign from God? More Roman Walls Collapse in Pompeii

It really bothers me hearing about some of the walls crumbling to bits at Pompeii.

I just came across the following video of the remains of the Villa d'Elboeuf on YouTube. I had no idea how big and elaborate it was. It must have been spectacular in the 18th century. Its present condition is shocking, however, which is a great shame. If anyone is interested, I posted a brief history of the villa back in March 2009 after news reports of a fire.

It is time the politicians learned to respect the experts in which Italy abounds—giving them the authority and resources they need

A building in Pompeii, little known and little visited, its function little understood, but known to some as the School of Gladiators, collapses to the ground one rainy night in early November. The shock waves move through the Italian to the international press, and the affair spirals up to the Italian parliament: a vote of confidence is demanded on the culture minister, Sandro Bondi. Many hasten to point the finger of blame. Is it Bondi’s fault, or is it that of the local superintendent (and if so which one, for three have followed in quick succession over the last year)? Or is it the fault of the special commissioners (and if so which) whom the Government appointed under emergency legislation some three years ago? Or is it rather the product of a general malaise, a systematic underinvestment in the site, a failure to prioritise the preservation of antiquities so exceptional that to lose them is an international scandal?

An article from this week's New York Times is a bit more sensible than most:

Pompeii’s Problems Reflect Longstanding Neglect

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

POMPEII, Italy — Is Pompeii crumbling?

So it would seem, judging from the media maelstrom about several recent collapses at the ancient ruins here, including that of the Schola Armaturarum, a spacious hall used by a military association before it was engulfed with the rest of the city by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

A long tract on the north side of the Via dell’Abbondanza — a commercial hub of this formerly prosperous Roman city — is blocked by metal barriers, and some buildings are propped up with scaffolding as a precautionary measure. Rubble sits on the road where the Schola Armaturarum stood, a remnant of the 1947 restoration that shored up the building after it was damaged by Allied bombing during World War II.

The collapses at Pompeii have become a metaphor for Italy’s political instability and its inability to care for its cultural heritage. There have been calls for the resignation of the culture minister, Sandro Bondi, and investigators are beginning to address questions about the management of recent restoration efforts. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, sent a team of experts this month to examine the damage at Pompeii, a World Heritage site, and the findings are to be presented at a conference in June in Bahrain.

“Pompeii is fragile,” said Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, an archaeologist who supervised the site for the Culture Ministry from 1994 to 2009. “There’s the type of construction, the shock of Vesuvius, the fact that it was buried for centuries in acidy terrain that ate away at the mortar.”

The pounding rains that soaked parts of Italy this fall were also a factor, he said, though far from the only one. “The rain merely drew attention to a state of neglect that has dragged on for years,” Mr. Guzzo said. “Ordinary maintenance and programmed conservation are not carried out at Pompeii. That is the problem.”

Tuesday, 14 December 2010

A long article in Le Figaro on the whole collapse/state of Pompeii debate criticises the lack of conservation planning at Pompeii and praises the HCP efforts at Herculaneum.

There's also this article from Reuters which is far more annoying: Pompeii collapses spark worry and outrage. To be fair, the article makes some good points about the amount of money spent on spectacular tourist-drawing initiatives in the last two years - but this hardly adds up to 'years of neglect'.

Well, I suppose this is one reason why we shouldn't let Pompeii fall into ruins, although I can't say it's occurred to me to list it among my priorities ...

Ovid's impotence shows why we can't let Pompeii fall

Evidence of the subtlety of Roman eroticism gets lost in translation, and may be further buried if Pompeii crumbles

By Jonathan Jones at Guardian.co.uk

... Ovid's poems are in libraries and bookshops all over the world. But only in Pompeii can you explore a Roman brothel, visit Roman baths decorated with saucy scenes and see the seriously kinky frescoes in The Villa of the Mysteries. None of these are reconstructions; they are real places, preserved by chance along with so many aspects of everyday life in an ordinary Roman city.

To let this magical place decay, to fail to care about such rare survivals of human intimacy, is more obscene than anything Ovid wrote. Shame on those responsible.

The remains of the Roman town of Pompeii destroyed by a volcanic eruption in AD79 continue to provide intriguing and unexpected insights into Roman life - from diet and health care to the gap between rich and poor.

The basement storeroom under a large agricultural depot in the little suburb of Oplontis was full of pomegranates. To many of the Pompeians trying to find shelter from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, it must have seemed strong and safe.

About 50 people took cover there. We know they did because archaeologists in the 1980s found their skeletons, well preserved.

They were overwhelmed by the volcanic debris and burning gases in the very place where they hoped they would be saved.

We know how these poor people died and we know what killed them. But these skeletons can also tell us fascinating things about how the people in Pompeii actually lived.

Saturday, 11 December 2010

This is the story of a disaster like no other. When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it rained 8 million tons of debris onto Pompeii it sealed the fate of more than a thousand people. But it also sealed the city form the world: preserved it, protected it, like nowhere else on earth, the rediscovered Pompeii gives us access to the ancient world. And now, with new findings and new insights, we can tell the story of the ordinary people caught up in this disaster. These are the forgotten men and women who lived when Rome ruled....and were buried when the volcano blew.

The publicity photos and video on the website are all bones, bodies and slaves (same old, same old), but the documentary itself features the PARP:PS project which promises to make the episode more interesting. Congratulations to Steven Ellis and his team!

Friday, 10 December 2010

There have been questions about measuring the capacity of vessels in some earlier posts . I came across these publications in a recent Finnish article on subject (Jani Oravisjärvi: "Pohdintaa astioiden tilavuuden määrittämisessä", Fossa 1 / 2010) and thought that they might be of help and interest.

Thursday, 9 December 2010

Posted this evening on the La Repubblica website, the Superintendent of Pompeii affirms that collaboration with major universities and research institutes is welcomed, and that the idea of an international collaboration aimed at preserving the archaeological remains of Pompeii is feasible:

More than 250 years after its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academic discourse and the popular imagination. This volume brings together a collection of ten papers that advance, challenge and revise the present conceptions of the city's art, industry and infrastructure.

The discussions of domestic art in this book, a perennial topic for Pompeian scholars, engage previously neglected subjects such as wall ornaments in domestic decoration, the sculpture collection in the house of Octavius Quartio, and the role of the covered walkways in luxury villa architecture. The famous cupid's frieze from the house of the Vettii is given a novel and intelligent reinterpretation. The place of industry at Pompeii, in both the physical and economic landscapes has long been overlooked. The chapters on building practice in inhabited houses, on the presence of fulling workshops in atriumhouses, and on the urban pottery industry serve as successful contributions to a more complete understanding of the life of the ancient city.

Finally, this volume breaks new ground in the consideration of the urban infrastructure of Pompeii, a topic that has won serious attention only in the last decades, but one that is playing an increasingly central role in Pompeian studies. The final three chapters offer a reassessment of the Pompeian street network, a scientific analysis of the amount of lead in Pompeian drinking water, and a thorough analysis of the water infrastructure around the forum that supported its architectural transformation in the last decades before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. 200p, 99 illus. (Oxbow Books 2010)

Infrastructure
What was a via? An Integrated Archaeological and Textual Approach (Alan Kaiser)
Lead Contamination in the Drinking Water of Pompeii (Duncan Keenan-Jones)
Practical Matters: Infrastructure and the Planning for the Post-Earthquake Forum at Pompeii (Eric Poehler)

Pompeii: one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history. We know how its victims died, but this film sets out to answer another question - how did they live? Gleaning evidence from an extraordinary find, Cambridge professor and Pompeii expert Mary Beard provides new insight into the lives of the people who lived in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius before its cataclysmic eruption.

In a dark cellar in Oplontis, just three miles from the centre of Pompeii, 54 skeletons who didn't succumb to the torrent of volcanic ash are about to be put under the microscope. The remains will be submitted to a barrage of tests that will unlock one of the most comprehensive scientific snapshots of Pompeian life ever produced - and there are some big surprises in store.

Using the latest forensic techniques it is now possible to determine what those who perished in the disaster ate and drank, where they came from, what diseases they suffered, how rich they were, and perhaps, even more astonishingly, the details of their sex lives.

The way the remains were found in the cellar already provides an invaluable clue about the lives of the people they belonged to. On one side of the room were individuals buried with one of the most stunning hauls of gold, jewellery and coins ever found in Pompeii. On the other, were people buried with nothing. It looked the stark dividing line of a polarised ancient society: a room partitioned between super rich and abject poor. But on closer examination the skeletons reveal some surprises about life in Pompeii.

Monday, 6 December 2010

The French version of the guide to the Herculaneum Centre's multisensory trail is now available to download freely from the Soprintendenza's website (scroll down to the bottom of the page). I promise that the English version will be available very soon!

Friday, 3 December 2010

Over the past month I have been glued to reports of the sadly all too numerous collapses in Pompeii. Like anyone who researches aspects of the ancient world, I'm concerned about how this activity has and will change archaeology at Pompeii for both academics and the interested public.

This morning I discovered (albeit belatedly) that the shop at VIII.4.25, one of many included in my own research, suffered a collapse of its own some time ago. To some, this won't seem significant because the collapse damaged a set of shelves and basin. Before records were made the counter belonging to this shop disappeared, destroyed in antiquity or at the time of excavation, and the remaining display shelves were subject to part-reconstruction in modern times. In this case, based on my own photos from July 2006 (left photo) through June 2009 (right photo) and photos from Pompeii In Pictures, the collapse can be dated to post-September 2007 but pre-June 2009. The shelves remained partially collapsed at my last visit in June 2010. To me it seems important as an example of smaller features, not just walls, that are being lost.

I'm sure that responsible SANP staff and custodi noted the damage at VIII.4.25 on their never-ending list of properties requiring work. However, how many of these features will be destroyed without notice or without conservation funding until they are too far gone for repair? My point is that these smaller collapses happen every day and that they have the potential to become innumerable.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill's recent comments were succinct and to the point that Pompeian archaeology suffers continuously from baking sun and soaking rain and underfunded repairs, that these are the causes of collapses at present, were in the past and will be in the future unless things drastically change at the site . For now, all I can do is to encourage others that non-invasive evaluation of the excavated archaeology at Pompeii (and other sites!) is better than further excavation which will ultimately destroy what hasn't yet been uncovered, and that it seems (to me) it is time for a large scale change to archaeological practice.

NB: It's been helpfully pointed out to me that some might misunderstand my own opinion on how best to proceed in future. To be clear, it is my concern that further excavation of the areas partially-excavated where the Nov-Dec 2010 collapses occurred not take place unless otherwise unavoidable. A number of current projects are re-considering what has be dug already through non-invasive methods and others are obtaining useful information in areas beneath excavated areas. Of course, not everyone will agree with my point of view, but that's where discussion can help us all to find the best result for Pompeii. Please do post your own views if you have them! (5.12.10)

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) today sent a team of experts to investigate the state of the archaeological site at Pompeii in Italy. The inspection comes after two walls crumbled at the ruins of the 2,000-year-old Roman-era World Heritage site yesterday, the fourth collapse in a month.

He told Lydia O’Kane that “the penetration of water is the single gravest problem on these sites.”

He adds that, “its not just the problem of water, it’s also the problem of intense sunshine… so it’s baked for some of the year and soaked for another part of the year.” Listen to full interview with Lydia O'Kane.